My Friend the Green Anole

Many days I have sat in the garden and watched this little green anole. Over the years I have seen him large and small and medium sized once again or rather I have seen generations of his relatives come and go. Their kind became rather scarce when a neighbor had an outdoor cat that would visit and perhaps found my little green lizard friends too tempting a snack to pass up. Once the cat had been relocated, I happily noticed a recovery in the population. I decided to do my part and use some vegetable kitchen scraps in the garden as mulch, under mulch , and in mini-compost pile situations. Have yet to see an anole chew on a cantaloupe rind though I can tell you they appreciate the insects attracted by its rapid assimilation into the garden. I have seen a two-inch anole stalk a beetle almost half his size and I have watched his older brother rapidly grab a fly winged insect of some sort in a fell swoop. On both occasions I felt almost as though I was watching a cheetah stalk and take down an antelope on an animal documentary or like the time I saw two coyotes going after a small deer on a steep scrubby hillside near Sierra Blanca, New Mexico. I was witness to raw nature in one of its most essentially brutal forms – the predator prey relationship. A garden and our human lives should be respected for what they are or could be and that is a web of thousands and millions of interactions- life and biochemistry on the mega, mini, and micro scales. We grow in our gardens plants selected by hundreds of generations of human farmers who by their very existence are messing with nature and have people running around fretting about invasive plants species(often spread by humans of course), fretting about what kind of fungicide, insecticide to remedy whatever blight or malady their limited perception sees at most problematic of the day. As you progress in your life perhaps you will cease to remember the piece of paper that tells you that you are a master gardener, licensed pesticide applicator,or techno-nerd who can solve the worlds problems in your myriad of code, and realize that you should let it be and realize that you know nothing and that if you start from that point and dedicate yourself to being an observer that you may actually learn something.